Sunday, 16 August 2026
73 stories filed.
AI Isn't Outthinking Mathematicians. It's Out-Remembering Them
Article URL: https://davidepiffer.com/p/ai-isnt-outthinking-mathematicians Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49312845 Points: 224 # Comments: 189
Discussion: Hacker News thread →
GNOME 51 Beta Released With Many Minor Improvements
The beta release of GNOME 51 is now available for testing. This cycle for the beta milestone is mostly a wide collection of minor improvements throughout the vast package set...
A controversial Alzheimer's surgery is said to reverse symptoms
Article URL: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-026-02448-x Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49312008 Points: 115 # Comments: 42
Discussion: Hacker News thread →
Semaglutide linked to 26% lower 5-year predicted dementia risk
Article URL: https://alz-journals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/dad2.70432 Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49311651 Points: 228 # Comments: 152
Discussion: Hacker News thread →
Ukraine strikes major Russian rocket factory with cruise missiles
"Flamingo missiles were used. A good achievement."
A Spectre Is Haunting Unicode
Article URL: https://www.dampfkraft.com/ghost-characters.html Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49310926 Points: 102 # Comments: 24
Discussion: Hacker News thread →
Intel's Jay Graphics Shader Compiler Now Passing Vulkan CTS With Xe2/Xe3 Hardware
Last year Alyssa Rosenzweig joined Intel to work on their Linux graphics drivers after previously serving as a contractor for Valve on their graphics stack and also previously leading the Mesa driver work for the Asahi Linux Apple Silicon graphics support. Since joining Intel, she has been leading the development of Jay as a new SSA-based shader compiler for Intel graphics hardware to be used by…
The First At-Home Test for Infected Ticks Could Improve Lyme Disease Diagnosis
Article URL: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/the-first-at-home-test-for-infected-ticks-could-improve-lyme-disease-diagnosis-180989235/ Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49310682 Points: 158 # Comments: 54
Discussion: Hacker News thread →
RustConn 0.20 Continues Further Polishing This GTK4/libadwaita-Based Connection Manager
RustConn has been in development for a while now as a modern GTK4 connection manager supporting a variety of protocols like SSH, RDP, VNC, Telnet, and more. RustConn 0.20 was released this week as the latest major step forward to this Rust-based connection manager leveraging the GTK4 toolkit and libadwaita...
So much solar: Digging into the list of every US power plant that went online this year
Utility-scale solar leads by a mile, followed by batteries. Fossil fuels, not so much.
Late Sound Fixes For Linux 7.2 Bring More Device Quirks, Intel Nova Lake HDMI-In Capture
Ahead of the presumed Linux 7.2 stable kernel release tomorrow, some last minute sound fixes/quirks have been merged for this next kernel version...
Auto-research with codex: How I achieved a 232x Faster Kernel
Article URL: https://sankalp.bearblog.dev/autoresearch/ Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49309549 Points: 329 # Comments: 82
Discussion: Hacker News thread →
KDE Plasma 6.8 To Allow Fine-Tuning Mouse/Touchpad Speeds
KDE developers continue to be quite busy this summer baking improvements for the upcoming Plasma 6.8 desktop release. This Week in Plasma is out with its newest issue to outline all of these interesting enhancements...
Debian Developers Begin Voting Over LLM Usage Within The Project
Debian developers have been considering a general resolution over LLM usage within the project. After collecting a variety of proposals, voting has now commenced for Debian developers to decide how comfortable they are with AI / Large Language Model contributions in the project or not...
Working with AI Feels More Like Leadership Than Coding
Article URL: https://allen.bargi.org/notes/working-with-ai-feels-like-leadership/ Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49309451 Points: 205 # Comments: 147
Discussion: Hacker News thread →
ChainDrop worm crawls into npm supply chain, evades standard defenses
Shai-Hulud variant poisons 444 packages, spreads via tarballs and dev-tool hooks
Lego's supersized Hubble deserves a little more shine
Excellent internal detail cannot entirely disguise some penny-pinching choices
The other Sean Byrne doesn't exist
Article URL: https://conic.al/writing/the-other-sean-byrne-doesnt-exist/ Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49307592 Points: 345 # Comments: 170
Discussion: Hacker News thread →
AMD Posts Massive 109 Patch Series For GFX 12.1 RAS Support On Friday Evening
AMD has a tendency to send out large feature patch series for their open-source Linux drivers on Friday afternoons/evenings. Today we were greeted by a set of 109 patches working on RAS support for the upcoming AMD GFX12.1 target...
Anthropic says text watermarking scheme relies on inconsequential words
'Shall I compare thee to a summer's afternoon' is the sort of thing this will make, and others look likely to adopt it
D7VK 2.1 Brings Faster Load Times, More Performance Tweaks
D7VK as the open-source implementation of the Direct3D 7 / 6 / 5/ 3 APIs atop the Vulkan API for Linux/Wine usage is out with another feature update. D7VK continues to mature quite well for further enhancing these older Direct3D API versions that cover the span prior to DXVK's focus of Direct3D 8 to Direct3D 11 or VKD3D-Proton's Direct3D 12...
DeepSeek's innovative harness treats everything as a plug-in
Chinese AI labs keep moving forward while US labs play defense
Lemonade 11.6 Integrates Muse-Glimmer 30B, Experimental TheNoise ROCm Image Generation
For those dabbling with generative AI on the weekends, the AMD-led Lemonade SDK 11.6 is out today with its newest feature release of this open-source software for running local AI apps with optimized LLMs across CPUs, GPUs, and NPUs...
Vulnerability giving attackers full control of Macs is under active exploitation
Screen-sharing bug lets remote hackers log in without a password.
Omarchy 4.0 Linux Distro Released With Desktop Shell Now Implemented Via Quickshell
Omarchy as the Arch Linux distribution developed by David Heinemeier Hansson "DHH" / Basecamp is out today with Omarchy 4.0 as the distro's biggest release to date...
First test flight of largest all-electric aircraft used just $5 of electricity
Airline-backed venture aims to develop a hybrid-electric commercial aircraft.
1.6M RingCentral accounts' data dumped after ShinyHunters extortion attack
Another one bites the dust
Suspecting court of using AI, man injected prompts in filings to try to win case
Judge warns pro se litigants are using chatbots wrong and getting desperate.
State judge orders Kalshi to stop offering sports bets and other wagers
Kalshi ordered to stop offering bets in Washington, must implement geofencing.
PBS station fears losing 50TB of data after being ghosted by cloud storage provider
"We don't have access to the data on the hardware/servers," Iron Mountain told Ars.
Russian missile uses Nvidia AI chip to help target Ukraine
Kyiv wants tighter controls to keep foreign silicon out of Moscow's weapons
Policy experts: Europe stuck between "rock and a hard place" on launch
It turns out that the economics of rocket reuse are pretty, pretty good.
Trump sends the US Navy back to the steam age
Troublesome electromagnetic catapults look set to be replaced with old-fashioned technology
Ars Live recap: How can we stop publishers from killing their own games?
The Stop Killing Games movement faces an uphill battle.
Judge gives Google one week to fix "anticompetitive" app store download in Google Play
Third-party app stores are about to become more visible in Google Play.
R-rated director's cut of X-Files film restores Chris Carter's original horror vision
Chris Carter chats with Ars about the film he originally wanted to make—and why it's more relevant than ever.
Linux 7.1, Linux 7.2 Performance On The Intel Xeon 600 Series
With Linux 7.2 expected for its stable release this weekend, today's testing has some additional testing of the Linux 7.2 Git kernel as well as Linux 7.1 stable compared to Linux 7.0 as used by default on Ubuntu 26.04 LTS. Phoronix testing previously conducted of Linux 7.2 have shown benefits for Intel Arc B390 Xe3 in some configurations, faster poll performance on AMD Ryzen Threadripper and…
Taylor Farms' connections to Trump admin spurs probe into Cyclospora response
Senator Warren questions whether Taylor Farms' influence swayed Trump admin.
Qwen 3.8 27B
Article URL: https://huggingface.co/Qwen/Qwen3.8-27B-FP8 Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49299605 Points: 1332 # Comments: 759
Discussion: Hacker News thread →
OpenAI and Anthropic in price war as Chinese AI rivals gain ground
US groups release cheaper models after new challenges to their trillion-dollar ambitions.
French tax authority admits data heist after crook touts 2M records
Government disputes claims of continued access as investigators measure damage
Virgin Galactic flights stay grounded while ticket prices head for the Moon
Turns out this space thing really is hard
Autonomous AI attacks pose 'clear and present danger' to critical infrastructure
Weaponized agents could turn digital intrusions into kinetic disasters, experts warn
RISC-V: They Should Have Known Better
Article URL: https://dmitry.gr/?r=06.%20Thoughts&proj=12.%20RV Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49298035 Points: 148 # Comments: 259
Discussion: Hacker News thread →
Less than a year on, Microsoft tells Mico to pipe down
Copilot's gurning blob is leaving Voice for a new career in education
TalkTalk Business and ARO to borg into UK tech services giant
70,000 customers will join the collective, whose name and leader remain unknown
Rocket Report: Rocket Lab shows off its flexibility; Blue Origin's two-pad plan
"We’ve never seen launch capacity so constrained."
Features Coming For Linux 7.3 From Optimizing Intel Hybrid CPUs To Old AMD Athlon XPs
With Linux 7.2 expected to see its stable debut Sunday, here is a look at what I have been monitoring as changes expected to be submitted during the Linux 7.3 merge window that will open on Monday...
Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 8 Ultra review: The ultra foldable with an ultra price
Samsung didn't have to change much this year because its hardware is just that good.
Crypto wallet maker Trezor confirms 13,000 customers' details exposed in logistics breach
Even if your hardware is secure, quantum-ready, encrypted, and future-proof, no one is immune to a supplier letting the side down
Patches Posted For Fixing The Linux DRM Scheduler's Fair Policy
Ahead of the Linux 7.2 kernel release expected out on Sunday, the Direct Rendering Manager (DRM) subsystem was forced to revert their "fair" scheduler policy default new for this kernel. Due to a last minute user-reported regression, FIFO returns as the default DRM scheduler policy for Linux 7.2. But patches are now available for addressing that regression and thus hopefully for Linux 7.3 there…
Open-Source exFAT Programs 1.4.3 Improves Fsck & Mkfs
Ahead of the Linux 7.2 kernel release expected on Sunday, a new release of the exFAT file-system user-space programs was released overnight...
Slackware-Based Zenwalk Linux Aims For "True Low Latency Desktop Experience"
It's been a long time since hearing much out of the Zenwalk project, the Linux distribution built off Slackware. It's still around though and with their latest kernel work are hoping for a "true low latency desktop experience" by employing the BORE scheduler...
BOFH: How our Covid ransomware protocol's Y2K blockchain lowered uptime
Diary of an excuse hound: Pie charts make us hungry for pizza
Scottish prosecutors cast eye over leaky supplier after staff data exposed
Unnamed third party spotted suspicious activity, with names, roles, and email addresses potentially affected
Claude Code returns blank thinking blocks, but reasoning still costs you
Developers report model thinking blocks being returned empty or truncated
Organic-looking brake assemblies debut on new Czinger 21C Spyder
Czinger used topological design and additive manufacturing to make the brakes.
Five years after quitting a job, developer’s former boss asked for rapid tech support
Connecting a single power cord turned into a lucrative all-nighter
New Zealand says China tried using space investments to spy on local affairs
Intelligence Service says finding domestic threats is harder due to proliferation of toxic content online
AMD GAIA 0.23 Delivers Ability To Install/Run AI Agents From The Terminal
AMD's GAIA open-source AI software built atop Lemonade for serving as an AI companion for emails, a Bash coding agent, and other AI agent skills is out with a new version today with more features while also improving security and making other improvements...
OpenAI ditches Recall-style screenshot surveillance for friendly keylogging
'Computer History' records clicks and typing to build ChatGPT memories
US wait times for cancer surgeries are getting longer and longer
Study finds wait times for cancer surgeries hit 10-year high.
Give Google the boot by building your own search engine
Got $10 and a gig of storage space? Marlin lets you weight your crawl toward the parts of the web you actually care about
KDE, Techpaladin & Kubuntu Focus Announce The Bullet-Proof KDE Software Initiative
KDE e.V. along with Linux PC vendor Kubuntu Focus and KDE-aligned consulting firm Techpaladin Software have announced a collaboration of the "bullet-proof KDE Software initiative" for providing at least three years of bug fixes and security updates to KDE Plasma 6.6 LTS and related software...
The Best Linux 7.2 Features: Cache Aware Scheduling, AMD Zen 6, AMDGPU HDMI 2.1 FRL
With the Linux 7.2 kernel expected to be released on Sunday, 16 August, here is a look at some of the most interesting new features and changes to find with this next kernel version to be used by Ubuntu 26.10 and other upcoming Linux distribution releases...
Private security firms will soon be allowed to hack overseas cybercriminals
Trump memo is first time gov't has authorized private sector to perform cyberattacks.
Virgin Galactic wants your help naming its new Delta class spaceship
Will it be the VSS... Horizon , Explorer , Ascend or Apeiron ?
Updated Coreboot/Dasharo For MSI PRO Z690-A / Z790-P Motherboards, Adds Overclocking
In addition to 3mdeb providing their Coreboot-based Dasharo built atop AMD openSIL on a Gigabyte EPYC server motherboard and recently making their first Dasharo release for an AMD Ryzen AM5 platform with the MSI PRO B850-P WIFI, the firmware consulting firm today released updated versions of their MSI PRO Z690-A and MSI PRO Z790-P Dasharo ports to those Intel Core motherboards...
Ukrainian drones wipe out entire US tank brigade in live war game
Ukrainian drone pilots teach the US military and NATO hard battlefield lessons.
The Beneficial Performance Gains Running The Framework Laptop Pro 13 / Core Ultra X9 388H With Linux 7.1+
The recently launched Framework Laptop 13 Pro powered by Intel Core Ultra Series 3 "Panther Lake" runs well on Ubuntu 26.04 LTS and other modern Linux distributions. In the case of Ubuntu 26.04 with Linux 7.0, while everything works, if upgrading to Linux 7.1 or the upcoming Linux 7.2 kernel is even better performance. Here are benchmarks of the Framework Laptop 13 Pro with Core Ultra X9 388H…
In 1962, Egypt's Missile Program Lost Its Key Scientist Without a Trace
Article URL: https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/a73358518/nazi-rocket-scientist-disappearance/ Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49271382 Points: 110 # Comments: 70
Discussion: Hacker News thread →
Show HN: Eigendrum - Draw any shape and hear what it sounds like as a drum
Hi HN, I built Eigendrum, a web tool that solves the 2D wave equation for arbitrary shapes so you can hear what they sound like as drums. How it works: * Solves -∇²u = λu using finite element analysis (Kφ = λMφ) on a triangle mesh. * Validated to Repo and tests: https://github.com/BaselAshraf81/eigendrum Happy to answer any questions about the FEM solver or Web Audio setup!
Discussion: Hacker News thread →
The mathematical beauty of hyperbezier curves
Article URL: https://linebender.org/blog/hyperbezier/ Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49237183 Points: 153 # Comments: 22
Discussion: Hacker News thread →